http://www.iht.com/articles/34600.html
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Fresh Doubt Is Raised
About French Explosion
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Joseph
Fitchett
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International Herald Tribune
Friday, October 5, 2001
Minister Speculates on Possibility of Terrorism
PARIS
As speculation continued swirling in France about the causes of a deadly, massive industrial blast last month in Toulouse, the French environmental minister, Yves Cochet, said Thursday that the blast might not have been an accident and speculated that it might have "a terrorist origin." .But no actual evidence of terrorism has been uncovered yet, according to other French sources with access to police inquiries. They said that a slow, accidental chemical reaction remained the probable cause of the explosion, which killed 29 people, injured 3,200 and devastated a swath of the southwestern French city. .Mr. Cochet's comments, citing an undisclosed "new piece of information," coincided with media disclosures about the identity of a body found in the rubble.
The corpse was reportedly that of a North African-born worker named Hassan Jandoubi, 35, who is said to have rejoiced about the Sept. 11 suicide bombings against New York and Washington. Five days after those attacks, on Sept. 16, Mr. Jandoubi obtained a temporary job via a local employment agency at the sprawling fertilizer complex owned by ATZ, a subsidiary of TotalFinaElf, the French petrochemical giant. According to official sources cited in French newspaper reports, he had been working at the complex for five days when the explosion occurred Sept. 21.
So little was known about him that he did not figure in the initial lists of workers killed in the blast. The night before, witnesses said, Mr. Jandoubi had quarreled loudly with truck drivers outside the plant over the American flags decorating their cabs in sympathy with the U.S. victims of the terrorist attacks. French investigators are said to believe this may have been a sign of his extremist views and sympathy for Islamic terrorism.
When his body was uncovered, Mr. Jandoubi was clad in two pairs of trousers and four pairs of underpants, according to an autopsy leaked to the French press. Other Muslim suicide bombers have worn special garb covering their private parts, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro, which speculated in an article Thursday that he might have been a trained Islamic terrorist.
So far, investigators have not linked him to the Osama bin Laden organization or other terrorist groups, a connection that would send a shock wave through France. An investigator in Toulouse complained that a search of Mr. Jandoubi's apartment for clues was "spoiled" because magistrates took five days to issue a search warrant.
The apartment had been completely cleaned out - "no clothes, no photos, nothing" - by the time the police got in, according to an official who spoke to the daily Le Parisien on condition of anonymity.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has promised legal changes to facilitate police work aimed at combating terrorism, but few changes have come into effect yet.
French officials have appeared to struggle since Sept. 21 in trying to manage public perceptions about the Toulouse explosion, France's worst industrial disaster since World War II. It came at a moment of acute international apprehension about major terrorist acts. France has special worries about its large Muslim minority, which includes many fundamentalists like Mr. Jandoubi, whose views have been shaped in poor and isolated Arab-populated suburbs.
In trying to calm apprehensions among the French public, officials have to deal with a legacy of mistrust about their reassurances regarding the security of nuclear reactors and toxic industrial processes. French skepticism is nourished by memories of official deception in France about the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986: For years, Paris insisted, falsely, it was later admitted, that there had been no radioactive fallout on French soil.
In Toulouse, government officials have steadily denied finding any evidence of terrorism so far, and last week the French prosecutor handling the case said publicly that he was "99 percent" certain that the explosion was an accident. When he failed to substantiate the assertion, it triggered fresh speculation across France about the remaining point of doubt.
Mr. Cochet, the cabinet minister who evoked the possibility of terrorism, is a member of the Green party who was recently named head of a government ministry partly responsibility for industrial safety. He said in a television interview Thursday that the authorities were not ruling out any hypothesis.
Suggestions of terrorism were played down by Jean-Michel Baylet, the publisher of the main Toulouse newspaper, the Depeche du Midi. "A ring of conspirators would have been needed to ignite the chemicals, but no one has come up with a shred of evidence after two weeks of investigations," he said.
